Chapter 2
Chapter Two
SACHA
“The path between worlds is walked by those who have lost everything, and by those who seek to lose nothing more.”
Wisdom of the Wandering Sages
The world around me tears apart, reality splitting at the seams.
One second, I’m standing in Thornspire Keep, my hand locked with Ellie’s as our combined powers rush toward Sereven and the crystal he’s holding.
The next, I’m falling through absolute darkness, every thread of my being stretched and compressed at the same time.
The sensation defies description. It’s not pain exactly, but a wrongness that reaches beyond any physical experience.
My consciousness splinters.
Disorientation comes next, where up and down lose all meaning.
The world spins in directions that violate natural law.
Gravity becomes negotiable, and direction meaningless.
For several heartbeats, I can’t determine which way leads to the sky and which to the ground.
The void stretches in every direction, consuming coherent thought until only instinct remains.
Then … impact.
Cold hits me first. A shocking, penetrating cold that is nothing like Meridian's mountain air.
This cold cuts through flesh and settles into bones.
Pain follows as my body slams against an unyielding surface, driving breath from my lungs in a visible cloud that dissipates instantly.
Each bone registers the collision separately before combining into a comprehensive ache that radiates through my entire frame.
I roll to my feet, shadows surging around me in protective response, and find myself in a world of nightmares.
Light assaults me from every direction. Harsh, unwavering brilliance that is nothing like fire or sunlight.
It emanates from towering poles topped with glass spheres, each one burning with a strange radiance that never flickers.
A similar illumination streams from countless windows of structures that stretch toward a sky rendered almost invisible by their combined unnatural glow.
The buildings themselves defy my understanding.
They're taller than any I've ever seen, constructed with strange materials I don't recognize.
Metal and glass combine in ways that create surfaces that reflect light in ways stone and timber never could.
Some gleam like mirrors, others seem to absorb the light and transform it into something else entirely.
Together, they create a maze of brilliance that makes tracking movement difficult and concealment almost impossible.
But worse than the overwhelming light and the strange buildings is the noise.
A constant roar fills the air—sounds that have no equivalent in my world, no frame of reference I can draw upon.
It batters against my eardrums, reverberates through bone, forces my jaw to clench against the assault. The cacophony never ceases.
“Ellie?” Her name escapes me before caution can stop me.
Calling out could mark me as foreign, vulnerable, yet the need to find her overrides calculation.
My voice disappears into the wall of sound, swallowed completely.
In this chaos, anyone could approach without my hearing them.
The constant noise renders me deaf to approaching footsteps, whispered conversations, the subtle sounds that have kept me alive through years of war, betrayal, and imprisonment.
I force myself to focus on immediate surroundings rather than panic.
Cold white flakes drift down from above.
Snow, finer than any I've seen in Meridian's mountains.
It melts as soon as it touches my skin, leaving damp traces that the wind chills.
I ignore both the snow and the cold while I scan my surroundings.
I’m standing in a narrow passage between two of the towering structures, partially sheltered from what appears to be a main thoroughfare.
The position offers some advantage. It gives me concealment from the broader area while allowing me to keep visual access to what’s happening around me.
The ground beneath my feet isn’t earth or stone, but some strange black substance marked with yellow and white lines.
They appear deliberate, purposeful even, but I have no idea what they mean.
The one thing I do know for certain is that I need to move away from here and find shelter.
Cold weather can kill you quickly in Meridian, and I have no reason to believe it will be any different here.
The way the wind cuts through my long-coat suggests this world's weather carries the same lethal potential.
I’m about to step out of the passage when a deafening roar almost ruptures my ears. It sounds nothing like any creature or natural force I know. The noise nearly drives me back to my knees. It pounds against my eardrums, reverberates through my skull, making my jaw clench.
I press back against the wall as something immense hurtles past. It’s made of metal and glass, and moves at incredible speed without any sign of horses or other draft animals.
Lights blaze from its front, and my shadows coil tightly around me, responding to both the threat and my body’s instinctive recoil.
More of these contraptions follow the first, each one producing the same bone-deep rumbling that vibrates through the ground and up into my body.
They follow the marked lines on the dark surface.
Some move slowly enough for me to see inside, where people sit and somehow direct them from within, as if the thunderous noise doesn’t affect them at all.
What are they? A weapon?
It doesn’t matter. I need to focus.
Assess. Adapt. Survive.
These three principles have sustained me for my entire life.
Whatever has happened, wherever I am, survival depends on understanding the new rules of this place quickly.
The alternative is death—from exposure, from discovery, or from failing to recognize threats that would be obvious to any native of this realm.
Dragging my attention from the strange carriages, I study the flow of people moving in all directions.
Their clothing is unlike anything in Meridian.
They’re wearing fabrics in colors so vivid they seem to glow, cut into shapes that serve no practical purpose that I can discern.
Many wear padded over-jackets that appear to be designed for the cold, but in colors that would make them visible to all enemies for miles around.
Most are utterly unaware of their surroundings, staring down at small glowing rectangles that emit thin chirping sounds.
The rectangles cast pale light on their faces, creating an eerie uniformity of expression—blank, entranced, disconnected from the world around them.
Some speak to the rectangles. Others tap them repeatedly with their fingers, all the while remaining oblivious to everything else around them.
A woman passes close by, without looking up.
I study her carefully. She has no visible weapons, no armor beneath her clothing, and absolutely no awareness of my presence mere feet away.
Her vulnerability would be laughable in Meridian, where such inattention could mean death.
Here, she moves with the unthinking confidence of someone who has never known true danger, never had to judge whether a shadow conceals an enemy or assess whether the person beside her poses a threat.
This isn’t just another world. It’s one where constant vigilance appears to be unnecessary.
A place where survival doesn’t depend on split-second decisions and lethal force.
The absence of guards, patrols, or any visible security measures suggests a society that has either conquered violence entirely or grown so complacent it has forgotten such things exist.
A world where predators like me can walk among prey without triggering any survival instincts. A realm without Authority patrols or Veinwardens, where magical power might go undetected entirely.
If I’m here, surely Ellie must be as well?
The violent energy that tore us from Thornspire must have affected us both.
The question is where is she? The displacement could have scattered us across this realm, or deposited us close together.
More importantly, did she arrive uninjured?
I refuse to consider the other option—that she isn’t here at all, but still at Thornspire facing Sereven without me.
I need information, shelter, and appropriate clothing so I can blend in.
What I’m wearing will stand out among the garments the inhabitants here are clothed in as surely as if I carried a banner announcing my origins.
The cold seeping through to my skin reminds me that immediate survival needs to take priority over long-term planning, regardless of how urgent finding Ellie feels.
I stay where I am for a while longer, taking time to really study the area around me.
The buildings have strange signs that blaze with captured light, and people enter and exit them freely, suggesting they serve public rather than private functions.
The structures lack the organic irregularities that mark buildings shaped by time and human hands.
After a few minutes, and a new sound that makes my ears ring, the crowd thins, moving in front of the strange contraptions with people inside that have stopped to let them pass.
Through a gap, I catch sight of a secluded entrance to one of the larger buildings across the path.
It’s partially concealed and none of the people flowing around me are paying any attention to it.
It looks like the perfect place to use as shelter while I attempt to get my bearings.